lundi 15 septembre 2008

We're all so bored with the financial crash here at REL. It's dragged on for over a year now and so what if some Brothers go bankrupt - it ain't so bad. The thing is, the real consequences of the last twenty five years of squander capitalism are hidden from view, rot and die unseen. On Aljazeera this morning, a programme about people on a Pacific Island called Maru who are undergoing cruel deprevations in the boom's aftermath. Short term profit in the 90's, technology, cheap stuff changed their society but destroyed the enviroment they lived in.

The working class now has to drink boiled rain water, do without electricity and make do with seventy dollars a week.One guy, father of three kids who all live in a caravan by the road, smiled as he reached for an Encylopeadia Britianica - "We found this on the dump and read it together every night." He smiled ruefully and then tore a handful of pages out of it and put it on the stove to get the fire going.

The manager of a supermarket sighs and says that all he can sell is the real basic stuff. "Once people have forked out for rice, sugar and flour - there really isn't very much change left over." (Face it, it could be you very soon.....but so what - are we that hooked up and dependent on the vile capitalist way of life that its breakdown leaves us panicking and desperate....I doubt it).

Further down the road there's a detention centre where the local athletic stadium used to be. The Australian government emprisons refugees and asylum seekers in it. The Maru government needed the money and ceded to Canberra's request. Out of sight out of mind.

So fuck the credit crunch and the so called never get round to happening melt down of the entire gross financial system. Even if it were to happen, the damage it has done has gone beyond a crisis. Thing will only get interesting when the people start to fight back.